Zion National Park
Geology on steroids
The story so far: While living in Nashville TN, I had bought a motorhome in Salt Lake City and drove it home through Colorado. Tired of the mountainless terrain in Middle Tennessee, I decided to move to Colorado - by way of California. Having visited my US Marine son in southern California before he deployed to Afghanistan, we then began making our way east in the motorhome to Colorado.
Zion National Park is on the west edge of the Colorado Plateau, an uplift that occured 70 to 40 million years ago. Here’s a view of the place shortly past the gate:
Most of the rock you see here is Navajo Formation sandstone. It it whitish on top, but acquires reds and strawberry pinks below. It was laid down from 190 million to 136 million years ago, and in this location is over 2,000 feet thick. An earlier formation, the Moenave, is visible in this photo in the cliffs near the bottom of the photo. It is a combination of mud, silt and sand and is about 200 million years old.
The road up Zion Canyon dead-ends at a place called Temple of Sinawava. It’s not a mountain, but a wide spot in the canyon where the walls go up, up up for thousands of feet.
“Sinawava” is a Paiute word for “Coyote,” an animal spirit that was much revered by the Indians. All of this wall is Navajo sandstone. According to the maps, there is a hiking trail that comes out on top of the bluff up there. I didn’t try to hike it.
In between the Park entrance and the end of the road is a junction with Utah State Highway 9, which climbs partway up these cliffs and then goes through a tunnel cut through the sandstone! On the way up to the tunnel is a very nice view of The East Temple. It is so big that I had to stitch together three photos to get the whole thing in:
At the Park’s lodge, between the East Temple and the end of the road, is a trail going up to some “emerald pools.” I wasn’t impressed with the pools, so I’m not sharing any shots of them here. But the views from the trail, oh my. Here’s one from the bridge on which you cross the river:
And here’s one from further up the trail:
On my way out the gate on our last day there, I inquired about the other nearby National Park: Bryce. “Oh no, it’s still winter up there,” the ranger said. “You don’t want to go there yet.” So the next morning we headed out to I-15 and then across Utah on Interstate 70 ahead of a snowstorm that was forecast for this area. There was too much to see in Zion Canyon, and not enough time to see it.
I do hope that anyone reading these accounts will click on the images to view in full screen. The East Temple image is breathtaking! Seamless for stitched photos. This is an exciting trip!